Facebook's $104 bn IPO is among the world's largest

Facebook's $104 bn IPO is among the world's largest

Facebook made history by launching one of the largest initial public offerings for a technology firm, aiming to raise $16 billion that pegs the value of the world's most popular social networking site at $104 billion.

Mark Zuckerberg-led Facebook put up 421 million shares of its common stock up for sale late yesterday at a price to the public of $38 per share, the company said in a statement.

The shares would begin trading on the NASDAQ exchange on Thursday under the symbol 'FB'.

Facebook's $104 bn IPO is among the world's largest

In addition, Facebook and the selling stockholders have granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to 63,185,042 additional shares of Class A common stock to cover over-allotments, if any, it added.

The over-allotment could see Facebook raising a total of $18.4 billion.

Zuckerberg is expected to ring the opening bell at Nasdaq remotely from Facebook's California headquarters.

Welcoming the IPO, the company is holding an overnight 'hackathon' where engineers stay up all night writing programming code to come up with new features for the site.

At $16 billion, the size of Facebook's IPO is the third largest for a US company, with the largest being the Visa IPO, which raised $17.9 billion in 2008, according to Renaissance Capital.

For a company that began in a Harvard dorm eight years ago, the IPO will bring a windfall which will give it the financial muscle to develop more services and features and employ the best in the business.

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Image: An illustration picture shows a woman looking at the Facebook website on a computer in Munich.Photographs: Michael Dalder/Reuters